Marjolein Katsma

I have two passions: travel and photography – and these are often combined. Though even in my own city, Amsterdam, I often have a camera with me.

With a background in art and architectural design, I've always been interested in how humans adapt their environment to suit them. First hunter-gatherer communities built shelters, to be safe during the night, or protected from the weather. From the time humans started to live in settlements constructions became more permanent and technology for how to build developed.

Thus humans started to surround themselves with walls, floors, ceilings and roofs, separated 'mine' from 'thine' with fences, and paved their roads to make it easier to move around. All of these reflect their technology, which was passed from generation to generation and developed further: in other words, all these surfaces are a reflection of culture. In addition there is the 'how we do things' aspect which is less technology but more an expression of identity, and a reflection of how communities and cultures are different from each other, even if they share technologies.

This concept of 'cultural surfaces' has become the major focus of my photography. The humans are not in the pictures - not directly - but they are 'present' by the result of how they shape their world. There is always a story...